It seems like this law depends on employers having an objective way to value employees so they can defend themselves against claims of inequity. There may be some industries where employees have an objective value, but I don't think that's true for the majority of jobs. I can only speak of the industries I know, technology and advertising, but in my experience its not uncommon to have 30% difference in wages between the lowest paid male employee and the highest paid male employee at the same level. We pay all people the smallest amount of money they will accept to do a job. That effect compounds as people move from job to job, as well, since most salaries at a new job are based to some degree on the salary at a previous job.

As an human being, I agree completely that women should be payed the same as men for the same job. As an employer, I see no way for legislation to fix this without the costs outweighing the benefits. The cost will be the ossifying policies that will be put into place that attempt to creative objective measures of value for employees.

In my small company, I pay a female the highest pay through a bonus system and a female the lowest pay within the bonus system, all within the same job description of financial analyst. Now tell me am I a meanie? Get real, The Economist. You are back in the nineties.

One of the pertinent reasons why there is a difference is that often a women leaves the workforce to have a child. And after 1-5 years returning does not warrant that she should receive the same as the man who worked continuously. In fact, most recent evidence suggests that the wage differential between genders in the same category who have similar work experiences and comparable reviews is minimal. The law in fact would encourage lawsuits that in many cases would be frivolous, and would be both unfair and unjust.

If firms can really pay $0.77 to an equally qualified women to do the same job as a man would get $1, why would anybody hire any men at all?
The law sounds good but is not needed. Laws that are not needed should not be created, since besides taking up space, they encourage lawyers to game the system. An individual or firm dragged into court has already lost, even if they win in court. Some things are none of the courts' business.

What you're saying here is that the price of any good -- be it labor or whatever -- will move to a supply/demand equilibrium.

This is true only to the extent that the market is open, liquid, based on public information, and primarily driven by financial concerns.

If the labor market were like this, then all jobs would be filled on job exchanges with spot pricing. But they're not.

However, in reality, connections often matter more than qualifications (i.e. not open), the job market is often illiquid (due to geography, hiring/firing costs, the rarity of pay cuts, etc), and managers hiring/firing/promotion decisions are made for reasons as much social as financial.

It is a big market. Firms are willing to move operations to different states or countries to save small percentages in labor costs. Surely those firms would attempt to save 23% on labor. Beyond that, firms that were hiring women at 77 cents on the dollar would enjoy a significant competitive advantage, so female heavy firms would be the most profitable. A 23% real labor cost advantage is a lot.

If the market is closed it is closed to the extent that government regulation has closed it. Free markets are not noted for closing markets. Most closed markets are closed in collusion with government.

Also, labor markets are huge, as in really, really big. And really big markets, even if they are illiquid as are real estate markets, still conform to market conditions and change over time. The time change is short enough that the wage rates for labor are very accurate indicator of the value of the labor bought on the open market. Hence, the market value of female v. male labor is correct in today's market conditions.

To add collusion, evil and dastardly deeds to the purchasers of labor is to add your name to those of the conspiracy theorists. All males (our conspiracy theorists maintain) seem to conspire to pay females less. What about female purchasers of female labor. Has anyone checked to see what they pay?

Actually, there are lots of things that close markets. Labor markets are sometimes very big, and sometimes local and not very big. A town with one sawmill is a fairly closed labor market. You can move, of course, but it costs your spouse their job, your kids their friends, and so on.

I would be very comfortable with a set of labor laws that varied based on the liquidity of the local labor market in question. E.g. pro-union rules are much weaker where there are many employers of a given profession, and much stronger where there aren't; this is similar to the anti-trust rules that stiffens regulation the fewer players there are.

Unregulated free markets have often closed on their own, forming cartels and monopolies. From the Fuggers in the 1490s to Standard Oil and AT&T, market players have noticed that they can get far richer colluding than competing, and can see off new competition with predatory pricing. Heck, I did it myself once, securing a soda-pop monopoly for my team in high school. Free markets are like engines : mis-regulate and they sputter, under-regulate and they rev up till they explode.

As for bigotry and greed ('evil' and 'dastardly' if you prefer) ... well, you will find those (and their opposites) in every sphere of human endeavour, be it employers, lawyers, union leaders or soldiers. A wise society sets up rules to (mostly) protect its members from excesses, and harness greed to the public good.

Agreed. There may be differences between individual men and women-- in qualifications, in length of years of service to the company, in boldness in asking for a raise-- that account for this or that point of compensation, but those are factual questions for a court to decide.

And if a court were to decide that no discrimination has occurred, and there were protests of that decision by feminists, or whatever, I'd have no sympathy for the protesters or the plaintiff.

This misses the very high cost of dealing with lawsuits whether or not they turn out to reflect a legitimate complaint. Thus it also misses the ways that simply threatening an expensive lawsuit can make it less expensive to offer a "settlement" even when the suits are likely to fail.
We should avoid laws that encourage such extortion, while allowing a for agency investigation of pay bias that (in cases of clear violation) enable summary orders to remedy the situation in the future.
The proposal in Congress really amounts to expensive gift to the legal profession, and this in an election year.

These are NOT factual questions for a court to decide. This is the stupidity of the whole question!!

Court decisions are not free market decisions. Women contract of their own free will and are not coerced. Jack Broadnax has hit it square: If women do the same job as men at a significantly less cost, then why would a profit seeking firm hire any men at all?

There is that. On the other hand, the Efficient Marketplace Hypothesis has been pretty well disproved by Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham. The perception of a complex situation, like a company's or an individual's profitability, is something well colored by the complexity, by emotion and by group thinking.

I disagree with a statement that "Indeed, one place where employers were free to discriminate against women and Jews, and did so avidly, was the Soviet Union." Whereas Jews were discriminated in the Soviet Union along with Germany, Italy and some other states in Europe I wouldn't say that women were discriminated or at least it wasn't an everyday routine, as an author made it sound.

Oh yes it was. Women were very discriminated against in the Soviet Union. Either you are an apologist for communism or you are ignorant of the facts.

My wife was born and raised in the Soviet Union. She says that while it is true that women were paid the same for the same level job, women were very much less likely than men to rise up in the ranks. The higher the position the fewer the women, until at the top ranks there were no women at all.

This would agree with the analysis by classical economists that if employers were forced to pay equal wages, then fewer women would be hired. Employees on the bottom rungs are less productive and so the disparity between pay and productivity is the lowest. As one rises up the ladder productivity is higher, so the wages are commensurate, meaning that "rain makers" are paid much higher wages than regular production-type workers. The most important way that one becomes a rain maker is to have experience and connections on the job.

Eventually, to avoid lawsuits, firms will create multiple classifications for jobs in such a way that it will be difficult to discern the difference in the job classification and criteria and of course the pay for he performance.

1) The law making this illegal is already in place, as the author has so noted, and perhaps the government should focus on enforcing whats already there instead of grandstanding before an election? Again, this is already illegal, has been for fifty years, and it's not like they just repealed the law, which this article seems to be instilling in the reader - that because Mr. Rand in particular and the Republicans in general voted against strengthening a law in a totally minor way, that means we're all about to lose our civil rights. Silly.
2) The author has utterly failed to explain why anybody should support the additional legislation, (focusing solely on defending a fifty year old law that will never be repealed), and even a cursory look at the comments will reveal several examples of what the law actually changes (not much at all). I'm left to conclude the author didn't do much research at all, just saw a nice fancy politically titled law nobody could possibly vote against, and a nice incendiary quote from a hardcore libertarian/tea-party politician who was among every single other member of his party who voted against it:http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/112-2012/s115
As you can see, this was almost a perfectly party-line vote, except of course the one democrat who sided with the republicans for procedural reasons. The article's tone is that everybody that votes against this bill is a radical who wants to strip non-white males of their rights.
3) There is no mention that Rand Paul, like his father, is a libertarian, and that his views on such matters are a different ideology all together from his Republican peers who also voted against the bill. Libertarians are opposed to virtually any form of government coercion in individual/business decision-making, whether anybody else (including themselves) thinks its a good idea or not. Rand would probably repeal the Civil Rights Act if he could.
As far as your "this amount for this group, and this amount for that group" comment, Rand Paul would probably say that a vast majority of americans would never work for such a blatantly racist company if they published such trash in a want-ad, and the problem would solve itself via the market as the company failed to hire enough qualified fellow racists.
4) How do you feel about the blatant racism of certain school scholarships being offered to people of specific birth-related backgrounds? Or government subsidy to minority business owners in contract awarding?
Doubtful a white man would win this one:http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-scholarships
Or white males getting any help from this government agency:http://www.mbda.gov/
5) Oh, right, as a liberal in america, its okay for racism, sexism, and religious discrimination to exist and be enforced by government, as long as its only against protestant white males. I personally think it IS appropriate for someone to say they don't support these practices or the government enforcing them.

I agree, that reverse discrimination is a problem but not to negate the fact that discrimination is still an issue in many areas, quoting the naacp
doesn't give a free pass, the bill is about gender discrimination
not a racial one.

I see two common flawed/irrelevant arguments against this bill.
1. "The gender gap is a fallacy" - This may be true, this may not be true. Regardless, it has no relevance to this law. If women are not getting paid less for equal work, then they will have no case.
If women just happen to take up lower paying jobs, then they will have no case. The law does not make it easier for women to sue if they are getting paid less than men, in general. It simply reinforces (as the author points out) existing protections against wage discrimination based on sex. That is, women have a right to equal pay for equal work.
2. The market will solve discrimination/discrimination is key to individual liberty: Many here argue that in our "Darwinian" economy, talented women will simply go to those firms that do not discriminate and eventually those firms that do will die. Again, this may be true, but it may not be true. Even if this were true, it still does not present a real argument for government inaction. If the end goal is for discriminating companies to die or be forced to change their ways, why not force their hand with some good old fashioned deterrence?
There will always need to be a balance against "individual liberty" and "equality." It is absolutely silly to insist that every government action that constrains individual liberty is communism/socialism/fascism/whatever overreaction you can think of. Liberal (in classic sense) governance is about externalities and I think it is pretty straight forward that many types of discrimination are highly costly to society. Sometimes the decent thing to do is to constrain individual liberty. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Why is there always such a childish overreaction?

I want to have equal liberty with everyone else. I do NOT want to have equality (as in outcome) with everyone else.

We are in trouble once we begin (and we have already begun) to chose equality over liberty. To choose equality over liberty means that someone has to establish some standard to determine what equality means. Only government coercion can enforce equality.

While certainly government is needed maintain to liberty, no standards are needed as to what that actual level is. For instance, equality would demand that the same pay is given, as in BOTH received $10 per hour. With equal liberty, each has right of free and uncoerced contract, but their wage rates may be different.

I think your liberty vs. equality absolutism ignores the existence of externalities. Unrestrained liberty is often not a good thing as it sometimes leads to massive constraints on other individuals' liberty! I believe that wage discrimination is precisely such an instance.

You say that "with equal liberty, each has right of free and uncoerced contract, but their wage rates may be different." I think this is too simplistic. If discrimination is systemic, then women do not simply have the freedom to renegotiate. Employers can pay them less and, given that discrimination is systemic, will do so. In such instances, I believe we should have no qualms against constraining individuals' liberty to discriminate.

Think about the experience of black Americans through the early-to-mid (to sadly late and perhaps beyond) 20th century. In Detroit, for example, blacks had extremely limited access to capital and capital restrictions (red lining) and contractual restrictions (not allowing your home to be sold to minorities) placed severe limiations on where blacks could move. It also severely limited their ability to create wealth and move up the social ladder. Clearly, outlawing such practices (that is, constraining individuals' liberty to discriminate) was hugely important.

It is not as if Black Americans could simply move to an open neighborhood (which would benefit by increased demand), because such neighborhoods sadly did not really exist. Furthermore, if they did, then they would still be more expensive due to blacks' limited choices in neighborhoods.

In reality, this was all made worse by the fact that black americans had such limited access to capital. The few neighborhoods they could move to were dominated by slumlords that had no incentive to invest in properties. The result was that blacks payed much more (as a percentage of income) for extremely poor housing.... Okay, I'm ranting. But the point is - unconstrained liberty is not always a good thing and in cases of systemic discrimination we should not shy away from constraining it!

"If discrimination is systemic, then women do not simply have the freedom to renegotiate."

Discrimination is not systemic therefore women do have the freedom the renegotiate or find another job. The premise of your argument is that every employer in America discriminates based on gender. This is simply not a legitimate claim.

I understand the United States to be a common law country where contracts are enforceable only if both parties enter into them voluntarily. Passing a law that incentivizes women to sue if they don't think their pay is "fair" by some fuzzy definition of fairness violates the entire premise of voluntary contracts.

I agree, however policies that extended home loans to minority
prone areas caused the housing bubble, in that way you are supporting alice's view rather than then need for government action or support for government to make a fair playing field.

You're wasting your time commenting on the merits of this bill. This is merely one in a long string of legislation introduced in this session of congress knowing that it has no chance of passage, but offered so as to make the opposition look bad. A congress that was attempting to actually do something, would consult the important members in both houses and put together bills that stood a reasonable chance of passing.

These days, that's not what happens. It's all about creating talking points for the next campaign. They do this by packaging legislation so that it includes some sort of poison pill that the enemy party cannot possibly tolerate, and then giving it a pretty wrapper that makes it look attractive to the public. With separate parties now in control of each house of congress, this game can be taken to an even greater extreme, because the poisoned bill can actually be passed in one house, even though headed for certain defeat in the other.

It's all about creating talking points, not about changing the law, so there's really no point in offering commentary about the merits of any of these particular bills.

That line of thought might (barely) stand up if you were aware of the disparity between your salary and that of current employees or other candidates. Not only will the employer not make you aware of the facts but can legally fire you later on for discussing salary with your peers.

And, in any event, I have a hard time envisioning anyone who wasn't desperate for work cheerfully hearing "We can offer you $45K a year. Of course, if you were a man/white/Christian/Republican, it would be $55K. Sorry about that."

sigh... I deleted my comment knowing the scope of my issue was too broad, yet somehow you found the crux...

People acting solely as Individuals have limited ability to effect the downward pressure on wages. There are always people, like my students who are willing to work even for free to get their foot in the door. This has led to a great deal of abuse in the domain of Internships... Your argument is correct in its Ideal and is Moral but fails in the less Moral domain of capitalistic motives.

Clearly there is a role for government and rules and not all capitalists are saints. That said however, Capitalism does not just benefit the capitalist - it mainly benefits the consumer. If the business (capitalist, producer) does not serve the customer (people) the capitalist will have, to paraphrase John Cleese, a late business. Capitalism is truly Power to the People; perhaps it should be called Customerism. What products and services that you use were invented, developed, produced and delivered by the public sector? How does that compare with what you get from the private sector?

Socialism, on the other hand, is Power to the State - and the State is always and everywhere all about power. No business has ever declared war; we all know the record of states on war. Given the history of the twentieth century (See: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.), I doubt you really really really think that giving control of all the wealth to the same people who already control all the armies and weapons is a good idea.

The major difference between Capitalism and Statism is incentives. The Capitalist is rewarded for satisfying customers and creating wealth. The freer the market the greater is the Capitalist’s incentive for wealth creating innovation and efficiency. With the State there is no market; rewards are for consuming wealth and amassing and centralizing power.

In general the only real purpose of a bureaucracy is to grow. It’s immaterial whether the bureaucracy is in the private or public sector - its only purpose is to grow. Fortunately, the market provides the private sector a pruning mechanism. Unfortunately, the public sector doesn't have one and every page, every sentence, every word of legislation and regulation is fertilizer that enables bureaucrats to grow the bureaucracy and the power of the State. In fact public sector bureaucracies are punished for efficiency and problem solving - they lose funding and therefore status and power.

Ah... but your system was also explored just prior to Socialism, It was called the Industrial Revolution, and your core argument (previously) of FORCE seems to fail here. Direct force was not applied to that Workforce. Wages of average people fell, and even children became virtual slaves (if not outright)

Given your knowledge of history - you likely understand the customer response to this, you have in fact posted it above.

Moreover given the fact that Slavery existed in a capitalistic society and people themselves became property to bought and sold - your belief in markets as an instrument of change is incorrect. A Civil War, rather than a Market correct occurred.

Umm Innovation seems an odd place to go...(any direct reason for this)

but its fine...
Given that businesses chase profits - and immediate profit trumps all else... I'm sure you can see the problem. Business rarely does Basic Research... Most Medical and Technological Advances have ties or histories with Public (and Private) Universities. My own work was recently turned down in NYC by a couple of VC's - not because my work lacked value, but because it wasn't immediately profitable. (I've just been hired by a Public University to continue the work - My For Profit employer could care less)

Side note - the CIA used to bring speakers into my school (secretly) and give talks - and get Grad Students to do dissertations that would be unknowingly used by the Agency. Big companies do this too.

For a more historical note - DaVinci and Galileo worked for the Pope (unsure how to define the church - it does business aspects, but free market - not so much)

"In general the only real purpose of a bureaucracy is to grow. It’s immaterial whether the bureaucracy is in the private or public sector - its only purpose is to grow."

Hey look - we agree.
The Market does pruning - and yet the Market is present in the Public via the Government. Public I don't think leads the Private, Public sectors respond to Private ones...

If the Political Market drives in a path (as it did from Industrial Revolution - to Socialism - and apparently back... )

Anyhow - my work calls me...
I enjoyed your rose-colored smoke-stack view of the world.
Do double check my words, I have real world experience in these matters.

The purpose of a bureaucracy is to implement government policy. An effective bureaucracy is essential to a successful nation, and an honest & competent one is essential to a free nation. The same is true of companies.

Who can get justice, if there are no clerks to book dates, publish decisions, track jail time? Who can defend his nation, without staff to keep the troops in ammunition, food, clothes, medicine, radios, and so on? Who is there to think 10,20,30 years in the future, when all the politicians can think about is the election next year?

There is a saying among military officers : "Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics".

Public sector bureaucracies are punished for efficiency and problem solving - they lose funding and therefore status and power. Why, as the end of a fiscal year approaches, does every government bureaucracy rush to spend every remaining cent of funds? What would happen to the Drug Enforcement Agency if the drug problem were solved? Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 21st century and why have American Indians still not assimilated? Why is American education poorer but vastly more expensive today than before the creation of the Department of Education? What has the Department of Energy accomplished re energy independence? Since World War 2 the US Military is 2, 3 and 1; won the Cold War and Kuwait, lost Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and tied Korea. US Intel agencies have been surprised by almost every major event and trend since World War 2 – the Chinese invasion of Korea, just about everything in Vietnam, Castro, Cuban Missile Crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Khomeini and the fall of the Shah, Chavez, the Iraqi move into Kuwait, 9-11, the Arab Spring, the current world financial crisis, etc. etc. etc. Yet both DOD and Intel budgets increase regularly. The Environmental Protection Agency insures “dirty” jobs and processes will move to such ecological wonderlands as China, India, Bangladesh, etc. Think about all that dirty Canadian oil moving to China so we can continue to pay our Islamic “friends” for their dirty oil; and while you’re at it think about the carbon footprint of transporting all that dirty oil half way around the globe. Does this really improve the environment in general? Something on the order of 40,000 new federal, state, and local new regulations and laws took effect on Jan 1, 2012. This is just a small sample - the list goes on and on.

Another wrong rationalization. The level of reasoning is low in this comment section. Your ability to reason things through and to see the implications and affects of ones decisions you wouldn't come to the decision that you did.

Capitalism is moral. Socialism is not moral. Theft of ones liberty is not moral.

Getting noticed is costly. Compare the cost of submitting resume after resume and gas and time looking for work v. taking a free internship.

In my first and ONLY internship I agreed to work for free for six months. After three months my employer paid me $800 per month for the remaining three months. (Yes this was some years ago). He did it of his on volition. Before the next three months was up my employer offered my a full time job at full salary and offered to pay my relocation expenses and offered to use his influence to get my accepted into another major university (I hadn't yet finished my BA).

What else is there to say?

He saw my abilities and wanted to hire my as soon as possible to avoid my leaving and working for someone else.

Yet again, the economist, supposedly libertarian exposes it's new-found NWO credentials. In a truly free market, the companies that pay women the same (or more), dependent on ability are more likely to succeed whereas it will be Darwinian that companies who don't employ the best but discriminate in numerous ways will eventually wither and die. I actually saw this theory reiterated in an old Harry Browne book I was reading the other day from 1970 so funny to see the same old rubbish being brought out and redressed up.

Women, if you feel you are underpaid and undervalued, go find a job that pays what you think you're worth. More likely these kind of stories are a result of socialism and government jobs, with fixed pay scales, no chance of progression and the same reward no matter how hard or little you try.

"Yet again, the economist, supposedly libertarian exposes it's new-found NWO credentials..."
I was sort of hoping that using the phrase "new world order" would utterly destroy anybody's credibility. I guess not.

I have difficulty breaking down the variance between another guy and I, much less between a woman and I, yet only one of these gets the shield. Does that mean the other one gets the sword???

Warrel Farrell wrote about 25 behavioral differences that factor into pay. These are gender-agnostic, but not gender-independent: women choose safer, more personable jobs with nicer hours. A man who chose safer, more personal jobs with nicer hours would similarly be docked.

Even then, there are some jobs for which women get a PREMIUM. Does this apply both ways? To ask the question is to answer it.

Hell, I don't negotiate as hard as I should, and I get paid less. That's okay; that's my lot. When I grow a bigger pair, I'll do better. I expect no less from anyone else. This Act has good intentions, bad execution. That's not good enough.

I will agree that Rand Paul is incorrect in labeling this some type of communistic practice. The problem that I find with the law is that both Lily Ledbetter and the Paycheck Fairness Act does little except to instigate lawsuits. The principle provision of Lily Ledbetter is that it simply changes the date when the statute of limitations runs out making it easier to go back much further in a worker's career to claim damages. The Paycheck Fairness Act merely provides for punitive damage awards for illegal behavior. Neither of thes acts actually changes the law requiring equal pay for substantially equal work.

No one would want to see the described ads in the article such as 100K for a man and 77K for a woman. This type of editorial slant seems to validate the idea that women actully earn roughyly 77 cents per dollar doing substantially equivalent work. What we must understand is that the much bandied about figure showing disparity is calculated by totalling the wages of all women and all men working the same number of hours and then creating a ratio of men to womens wages. As long as that is the methodology no law will instantly create equivalent wages - or ever.

If we assume that we have 100 professionals distributed at a ratio of 6 to 4 between men and women and both sexes are paid exactly the same at 100K per year then the wage differential is zero. However, if we introduce 100 service workers into the mix with a male to female ratio of 2 to 5 and all of these workers are paid exactly the same at 20K per year; again we have no discriminatory wage differential. However, when we total the numbers up total wages for men are (60x100K)+ (40x20K)= $6.8mm and the total wages for women's is (40x100)+ (60x20)=5.2mm. Now we have a ratio of 6.8 to 5.2 which is either trying to say the average male makes 131% more than the average women or that the average women makes only 77cents for every dollar a man makes.

The wage gap exists for many reasons. The wage gap will close and probably at some time in the future be inverted as more women than men are receiving graduate degrees. My big concern is that do women want mens wages pushed down to their level or do they want their wages to rise to male wages. It stands to reason that if individual wage negotiation is illegal and will subject the employer to punitive damages employers will equilibrate wages at the value of the least productive member.

It's a dangerous road to decide employers shouldn't be allowed to discriminate based on relevant factors, just because the employee didn't choose them. And being a woman is definitely relevant, if nothing else because they're more likely to take matenity leave (nevermind modelling or dancing jobs).
By this reckoning, we can't "dicriminate" against someone because they can't speak english or work computers (they never had access to education). In fact, I never chose my singing voice or looks, how dare studios pay Beyonce more than me for the same job!

Should the electronics store be allowed to sue me when I buy what they are selling at a higher price somewhere else?

Should consumers be forced to pay the same for all similar products wherever they buy them?

Discrimination IS the market. Robbery is not. Slavery is not. But discrimination is. Our freedom to discriminate between sellers of products and services, is what creates a market for goods and services.

All this law (if it gets passed) would lead to is a bunch of lawsuits from people (both men and women) who would like to think that they should be paid more or equal to some others in their work location.

Salary is provided to an individual not just based on the educational and non-educational qualifications and the number of years of relevant experience but a lot of intangibles go into determining what a commensurate (read NOT equal) salary is.

We are all not ROBOTS whose salary can be easily determined by the model number and number of years in service.

This reminds me of the time in Tennis Grand Slams where the women claimed their prize money should be equal to the men .. they eventually got the same prize money based on the argument that what decides who wins more is the TV Rating they get. More people want to watch Sharapova, women should get more money.

Similarly at work, one's efficiency, attitude, work ethic, team work and a ton of intangibles should determine what a fair pay is. Not some appendages.

Calling The Paycheck Fairness Act "Stalinist" is disingenuous for another reason;
Sexism was not one of Stalin's many evils. In fact Stalin's Soviet Air Force was the only one in WWII that allowed women pilots to actually fly combat missions. (The Witch squadron, that hunted German Panzers using Il-2m Sturmoviks, consisted entirely of female pilots)
In short, Rand Paul owes Josif Stalin an apology in hell... :P

The point of this legislation, as the author points out, is not to hand over wage control to the government but rather give the Equal Pay Act of 1963 some teeth.

The Equal Pay Act allows wage disparities between members of a different sex if the employers provide “any other reason than sex” as their reason. Though this might sound reasonable, a charge of sex discrimination is easy to defend if the employer is allowed to come up with any other reason as their defense. As a practical matter, it makes it near impossible to win a suit under the Equal Pay Act.

This new law removes the “any other reason” language changing it to “a bona fide factor other than sex, such as education, training, or experience.” These are more tangible reasons, forcing an employer to back their defense with actual evidence.

Whether widespread sex discrimination exists is arguable, but I hope few would disagree with the idea if either a man or a woman is being discriminated against, that they should have their day in court.

I do find it troublesome that scope of bona find factors is fairly narrow.

I'm surprised my well respected colleagues the read the economist can't see through a political piece of legislation only created to counteract the bad press the democrats have been getting concerning women. This bill had no intention of helping anyone other than one side finger pointing at the other. It's a sad day that this is all political gamesmanship at the expense of women and their presidential votes.